The first of three towers is completed for the London Thames Cable Car (Emirates Air Line).

The Londonist has a photo from Transport for London of the first completed tower for the forthcoming Emirates Air-Line. According to the Londonist, the tower is the shortest of the three but – even still – is over 60 meters high!

Now it’s incredibly hard to make any comments on the aesthetics of something merely from a single picture. But it’s worth taking note of a few things right from the start:

The open spiral design is absolutely inspired. It makes the tower feel far more light-weight and airy than it is. I sincerely hope the “interior” of the tower is lit at night so as to allow the entire structure to “glow” from within.

I understand that to speed construction, the sheave assemblies (the stuff the gondolas travel over) were necessarily off-the-shelf components plugged into the custom tower infrastructure. Nevertheless, the two components don’t quite seem to co-exist well with one another. They don’t feel like a united whole.

The sharp, machete-like sheave supports should be thrilling to ride next to.

As anyone who owns a white car can attest to, this thing is going to be a monster to keep clean.

As the impetus for this system was arguably next summer’s Olympic Games in London, I can’t help but wonder if the tower designers were intentionally going for a design that looks like an Olympic torch.